Research Reflection

Holding on while letting go Although we left our research site during the seventh week, that doesn’t mean that our research stopped, albeit we didn’t do all that much research on pain and palliative care during the eighth week. This week was our cool down week; tying up loose ends while in the country and treating ourselves to a bit of fun before we returned home.  In a surprising turn of events, we found ourselves in Saifee hospital, adding to our list of different hospi

Fieldnotes on farewells This final week at Tosamaganga was a slow unraveling—of cases, relationships, and the rhythms we’d come to know. It was a week of goodbyes, of quiet grief, and of trying to hold together the fragments of a place where medicine is practiced in the open, and care is always a negotiation. We began with Bibi in the private ward, her metastatic breast cancer managed with morphine stored in a recycled water bottle. The image was both resourceful and heartb

Improvision and intimacy in care This week unfolded in fragments—pungent smells, jarring sounds, and moments that blurred the line between clinical observation and emotional reckoning. From the ride to the hospital, where Lucy and Tito debated pigeons, crows, and the haram diet, to the wards where diagnoses collided with resource gaps, everything felt heightened. The hospital was not just a place of medicine—it was a stage for contradiction, improvisation, and quiet resistan

Renewal amid rupture This week was a sensory overload—“stenches, sounds, and stares” really sums it up. From the pungent smell of the “isolation room” that drifted into the ward to the loud banging of glass panes being repaired mid-rounds, everything felt amplified and jarring in the soft-spoken society. Even the way people look—whether it’s the surgery team ogling Lucy and saying “mmm beautiful…mrefu,” or the constant crowding around patients—there’s no such thing as priva

Practicing Medicine in Public This week was a sensory overload—“stenches, sounds, and stares” really sums it up. From the pungent smell of the “isolation room” that drifted into the ward to the loud banging of glass panes being repaired mid-rounds, everything felt amplified and jarring in the soft-spoken society. Even the way people look—whether it’s the surgery team ogling Lucy and saying “mmm beautiful…mrefu,” or the constant crowding around patients—there’s no such thing

This week was steeped in contradiction—moments of connection layered over clinical heartbreak, vibrant conversation punctuating wards heavy with silence, and a slow realization that I’ve become not just a witness to suffering, but to the fragile dignity of those navigating it with poise, humor, or sheer endurance. It began, oddly enough, with chai and gossip. Finally invited to Chai after 2 patient weeks of waiting, we sat with Rachel, Edson, Emmanuel, and George. Amid jokes

Navigating Care in Constraint This week immersed me in the layered complexities of clinical care in a low-resource setting—where medicine intersects not only with biology, but with economics, social stigma, language, and improvisation. Practicing medicine here is rarely linear—it's an adaptive, daily negotiation between what is known, what is possible, and what simply has to be accepted. What stood out most was the tension between knowing and doing. Diagnoses unfolded with

Listening, Learning, and Asking in the Margins of Care After being in the hospital last year, we had to remind ourselves that it was important to become acquainted with our surroundings and ease into our work. We would not start our interviews for a few weeks, but begin asking questions and establishing trust with our new coworkers. The questions were not about the medical nature of an issue, but about why it happened, taking a true ethnographic approach.  Wednesday:  We ar